Talk:Leeds/Archives/2009/October

Meatpuppetry

It has come to my attention that earlier discussion relating to the merger of this article with City of Leeds was rigged by use of external co-ordination from the discussion forums of the skyscrapercity.com website. This is known on Wikipedia as Meatpuppetry. Our policy regarding this is summarised as follows:

The evidence for this is located here: [1] MRSC (talk) 12:57, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

This serves as a further invalidation of the so called "agreed" merger in March 2009. --Jza84 |  Talk  13:26, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Complete invalidation by my reckoning. MRSC (talk) 13:29, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Hang on a minute, looking at that thread, someone had started a thread in skyscrapercity about the wiki Leeds article to discuss their views on it. Nowhere have they tried to incite people to sign up to wikipedia and share their view. A "Leeds" forum doesnt mean it is partisan for or against a merge either. And most importantly, with regards to the merger which took place, all people partipating in the discussions which led to merger were long standing editors who had been engaged in the discussion long before that skyscrapercity thread appeared. It's also worth remembering that before merging, it was left open for a significant time for interested parties to voice any refutal of the evidence put forward or provide a *single* source to back up the lead. knobody did. That Jza84, the main person against a merger, was away and vanished for an unknown period of time should not mean discussions were unable to continue. That said, I think it is important this skyscaperthread is kept an eye on to ensure no canvassing occurs in that thread which would jepodize the integrity of any ongoing discussions. --Razorlax (talk) 15:24, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

It is considered highly inappropriate to advertise Wikipedia articles to your friends, family members, or communities of people who agree with you for the purpose of coming to Wikipedia and supporting your side of a debate.

What really needs to be done is for people to consistently keep fighting for a change [2]

the only way the article will stop being a complete lie will be in 30 years time or so when they both die, and all the rest of the normal people can edit wiki to be accurate [3]

This is especially so when the admin dealing with it is actually a manchester-admin who is very very passionate about ensuring the manchester wiki page is the slickest promotional material about manchester around, and is quite keen on ensuring Leeds is misrepresented. [4]

This means the whole artical is based on a big lie - but a lie that suits the 4 people who have a stronglehold on the supposedly free to edit wiki page. [5]

if the 4 people who have a strangle hold on the Leeds page allowed the majority consensus to do this, then the rest of the problem with the article wouldnt be such an issue. [6]

Just change it back! just as easy as the guy who made the change did it without garnering consensus or support, you can easily change it back. If that person changes it again.. then someone else should change it back. Thats how wiki works and is supposed to work. [7]

why dont u create a profile and point these things out! I've made a post to the discussion and it appears this has pushed for a proposal to changing it back to its original name now. So if interested editors post whether they appose or not the revert. [8]

This is a very serious breach of the meatpuppetry policy. MRSC (talk) 16:00, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

There's clearly an editor of Wikipedia who is/was operating on that site. Disgraceful. This is meant to be a collaborative encyclopedia; Wikipedia is not a battleground. --Jza84 |  Talk  17:42, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

(<-) Given that this new evidence has come to light, it's simply a must that we restore the split articles. If not, I'm happy now that steps should be made for formal arbitration, as I'm confident where the good and bad faith edits have been made. This evidence just corroborates everything I've been saying - that a core of Leeds based editors, mixed in with meat/sockpuppets forced through a merger based on poor evidence and no consensus, without proper involvement of regional and national WikiProjects. Even that aside the reference material shows that the two are distinct in the "concept testing" drafts anyway. --Jza84 |  Talk  17:49, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

In light of the above I think we should put the two drafts live now in article space, replacing what is currently at Leeds and City of Leeds. The merge clearly occurred out of process following a coordinated external attack on our procedures. MRSC (talk) 18:04, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

The suggestion that a merge occurred out of consensus is ridiculous. Firstly, the merge, as originally proposed by me never went ahead--we started with two articles and finished up with essentially the same two articles. One was renamed to better reflect what it was about (City of Leeds -> Governance of Leeds) and the the other was given a new lead such that the area included as the subject of the article was verifiable in accordance with Wikipedias core policies. There was no merger, and the people who were actively involved in the discussions on these articles accepted the changes that were made. As for consensus, there is, and has never been, any requirement to vote on changes to articles. WP:Consensus states "editors typically reach consensus as a natural and inherent product of editing". The opponents of a change in the structuring of the Leeds articles have repeatedly used a misrepresentation of the consensus policy as reasons to reverse changes to these articles--changes should never be reversed due to no consensus —Jeremy (talk) 19:07, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

They should be reverted when the evidence is against them. And I think even those against the split wouldn't argue there wasn't a merger (read the archives - the phrase is used repeatedly!. --Jza84 |  Talk  19:35, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Well we have had, and continue to have, long discussions about the evidence for what Leeds is and it has been clear for a long time that there is a stalemate on that issue. We can, and have, discuss that evidence in other threads. My point here is that the assertion that the previous changes were made without consensus is based on a misinterpretation of the consensus policy. —Jeremy (talk) 19:44, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not going to start quoting policy acronyms at you, but it is clearly outside of our normal processes for articles to be advertised on external sites encouraging people to come here and introduce bias. This is not something I would imagine we tolerate. Discussions and actions informed and based on the contributions of such recruited meatpuppets should be reviewed with suspicion and/or ignored. MRSC (talk) 19:51, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)The merge was certainly not made within the spirit of the consensus policy though. And again, as asserted by the verifiability of Talk:Leeds/draft and Talk:City of Leeds/draft, the fact that the Salford, Greater Manchester and City of Salford articles are good articles, that users did not contact all relevant WikiProjects, that there were both sock and meatpuppets operating to push for the merge, that Leeds was never "expanded/extended" in 1974, that there is a suitable criteria to use at WP:UKDISTRICTS, all show the strength in argument. The reasons to keep this merged article just get more and more obscure - why don't they address the main aforementioned arguements where the proper substance of the debate lies? No user can possibly say that there is not (verifiably) a settlement in the City of Leeds called Leeds when reading Talk:Leeds/draft, unless they just don't like it... --Jza84 |  Talk  19:57, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you can explain to me how the draft article verifiably shows a settlement in the City of Leeds called Leeds. The only reference that I can see that appears to be trying to verify this claim is reference 2, a reference to a section in Regionalism contested: institution, society and governance that starts "Leeds is the second metropolitan district in England outside London (population around 717,000)" and continues throughout to use Leeds to refer to the local government area. —Jeremy (talk) 20:04, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Most sources say "Leeds" not "City of Leeds" - this is the stimulus for the confusion that exists (IMHO). Luckily for the rest of the published domain, they don't have to have unique titles for each entity, meaning they can use names in shorthand. Don't agree? -- Google some places that double up as settlements and boroughs (Oldham/Wakefield/Salford/Carlisle) in shorthand and see what their area or population is. On Wikipedia, unfortunately, we have to have unique titles for seperate entities (and they are seperate in this case), hense the rather clean, clear and clever disambiguation of Salford (others exist, Lancaster, Sefton, Carlisle, within the bounds of WP:PLACE I should add). This is why people think that "Leeds is a city" means that the city is Leeds, a place, when infact it is one of several settlements in a single district.

I have stated elsewhere that maps from the Ordnance Survey (the authority on British geography) prove that there is a place called Leeds within a district called Leeds by way of their keys and coding and cartography. I plan to visit Rochdale library to cite a particular sheet/map for the draft (but this fact can be attested by the MiniScale maps from the OS online anyway). Push-come-to-shove, I may even visit Leeds itself and see if there is a boundary marker between Morley and Leeds (I know from an image search there is one for Morley...) deep within the City of Leeds. :) --Jza84 |  Talk  21:28, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

From the miniscale map legend it would appear that Leeds (in black) refers to the area marked as an urban area. It would be interesting to know if this is the same as the ONS urban area. The same map also delineates an urban area for York. If, as you agree, most sources use Leeds to refer to the area covered by the entire local authority, then this is surely the common usage of the term--I have stated in the past that, though I don't see it as the ideal solution, I would support a compromise that gave us a Leeds article that covered the entire city and a separate Leeds urban area article for the urban core of the city. —Jeremy (talk) 22:01, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

So you concede that the OS shows a place called Leeds in the city of Leeds? (doesn't really matter if you do or don't because it's there as a fact in a reliable third party source).

Leeds is probably the common name for a major city in northern England. This I absolutely agree with. But I think most users from outside the region would find it most useful to a) learn that there are several historical and contemporanous definitions of Leeds, b) that Leeds isn't just a city, but a place of historical origin in West Yorkshire, c) they can pick which definition of Leeds they want (just like Salford - the two main articles of which are Good Articles incase you missed that). There is no such place called "Leeds Urban Area" recorded on maps, there is "Leeds". Per WP:PLACE and every single article under that convention we dab to "PLACE, CEREMONIAL COUNTY" (thus Leeds, West Yorkshire - an article that existed for years at Leeds and can be proved as a topic that can form a verifiable article). --Jza84 |  Talk  22:12, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Not at all--and I dispute that reliable source that you give (the OS map) confirms that. The OS map simply confirms that which no one in this discussion has ever disputed--that there is an urban core at the heart of Leeds. The legend for the map is ambiguous, circles are used to mark towns, but urban areas are approximated with a yellowish shaded area. As I stated above, I would be interested to know what the OS categorize as an urban area, my best guess would be that it is the same as the ONS urban area. Regardless of the interpretation of the urban area, the word Leeds is clearly also used on the map for the name of the district, backing up the other sources that, as you have agreed, use Leeds to refer to the district. Stating that all these sources are wrong is fine as an opinion, but Wikipedians have reached the consensus that what is important is verifiability not truth. Thus, as all these sources and the OS map use Leeds to refer to the city the article called Leeds should be about the city. I have always felt that such an article would be sufficient, but if an article is wanted on the urban area it should not take precedence of the article name for Leeds. It would appear that the naming scheme at WP:PLACE is only adopted if disambiguation is needed. Others have called for Leeds to be a disambiguation page. Personally I don't like that solution but I think it preferable over making up our own definition of what Leeds is based on the fact that the OS map has the word Leeds on it twice. —Jeremy (talk) 22:36, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't want the "settlement" to take precidence over the "city". That's not what I want. The previous situation of "Leeds" and "City of Leeds" was poor, unfair, non-neutral, bad, mad etc etc. I am opposed to going back to the pre-March two article solution. Rationale being that we shouldn't force the "settlement" on our readers like we did.

Let me say this again, clearly: I want Leeds to be disamibuation page like Salford, with the option to go to each article being decided upon by the reader. Rationale: this is neutral, helpful, clear, and doesn't force preferences upon our readers. You yourself admit there is a definate urban place called Leeds in the city as does Raxorlax, so why not have that article at Leeds, West Yorkshire, like we do for all other comparable places? I really don't see what there is to debate about, why the hostility and resistence. --Jza84 |  Talk  22:58, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I just discovered this section, and although I don't have much time (and am on dial-up right now), I feel that I must comment. The first post in theskyscrapercity (I never heard of that site) forum as well as the posts in this section seem to confirm my suspicion that the question whether Leeds should be covered in a single article or in two is seen by some as a match in a ridiculous "who has got the biggest/longest ..." type contest. So far my suspicion was nourished mainly by insinuations from the pro-split camp that editors from Leeds might not be objective. Insinuations that made no more sense to me than the arguments for the split; probably because being a foreigner and relatively immune to conditions such as patriotism I am not used to this game.

I refuse to play. I am here to write an encyclopedia, and if the impression that editors disrupt Wikipedia by putting scores in this game above the encyclopedia continues, I will report them to ANI. I am talking to both sides. Hans Adler 18:55, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this is a helpful comment. Threatening other users with ANI is not a way to write an encyclopedia. By all means, if ANYONE feels I'm somehow part of this "contest" of point scoring, and that I'm not presenting sources or working within the bounds of policy (or even perhaps I am using an external forum to "win"), by all means, now is the time to report me. I'm a little sick and tired of the threats of arbitration and admins - I actually want it to happen as the evidence is so compelling regarding what's gone on here. --Jza84 |  Talk  19:35, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I can't say I understand what is going on here. How anyone can read the external link and not see that there has been an external attempt to introduce bias (or create a merge - call it what you will) over a period of time is beyond me. MRSC (talk) 19:37, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

--imagine that the "spliter" had behaved this way; I'd never hear the end of it. The whole thing is appauling. I aim to re-establish the two, pre-split verifiable articles. --Jza84 |  Talk  19:45, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

The content of the external link is disturbing. I just don't see in any of the previous discussions evidence of widespread meat-puppetry. There were a few IPs and one new editor that got blocked, but the rest of the editors involved in the discussions were well established editors with a long history of valuable contributions. —Jeremy (talk) 19:48, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

That may be true, but their decision must have at least partially been informed by a lengthy and persistent period of "attack" on the article and talk page by these persons. Part of the rationale for the merge (or whatever you want to call it) appears to have been desire for an easy life. We should not reward tenacity and coordinated external influence. MRSC (talk) 19:52, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

That being the case you should probably leave it to the editors involved to state whether their opinions were swayed by outside influences. They certainly didn't influence my opinions on the Leeds/City of Leeds articles--opinions that I first expressed on this talk page back in 2005. —Jeremy (talk) 20:08, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

We need to ask someone totally unrelated to this article what they think the significance of this evidence is. We are possibly too close to the issue to see clearly. MRSC (talk) 20:15, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

It is also worth noting that the change that occured to adhere to core polices did not occur by voting or seeing whether there was more people in favour of altering the article or keeping it the same - there has always been slightly more people in favour of the change, however that cannot be used in itself to instigate a change where there was clearly conflicting viewpoints. The ammendment to the article actually occured by following wiki policy and challenging the lack of verifiability of the article, and asking those editors wanting to maintain the article in its incarnation to provide verifiable sources that did not break the policy of neutrality - something the lead lacked. This was not forthcoming. Moreover, a catalogue of comprehensive evidence following wiki guidelines was put forward showing that the word "Leeds" in majority interpretation of all verifiable sources (99% of times) means the city and metropolitan borough, not the settlement within, and conequently any article titled "Leeds" must reflect this so as not to conflict with the core policies. This evidence was not refuted, and still has not been, and subsequently suffficent time was given to allow anyone to bring evidence to the contrary. None was brought forward, and no editors expressed or challenged this. Subsequently, the lead was ammended to adhere to core policies. After this, nobody reverted back which they were entitled to do, and a flurry of positive editing on improving the article, in a way that hadnt been witnessed for many years ensued. --Razorlax (talk) 20:45, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Can you confirm if you are wiggleyleeds on this outside forum? MRSC (talk) 21:15, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Is this true for Salford then? Oldham? Bolton? Carlisle? Winchester? London even? I wholeheartly agree that the majority of sources use "Leeds" meaning "the city", but what I disagree with is that Leeds was expanded in 1974, and is therefore comparable to Manchester or Liverpool (because, this is a falsehood). What would be doing the city more justice would be to fall inline with every other place (not just cities, but all human settlements in England and Wales) and tell readers the verifiable truth - that there is a place called Leeds upon which the much larger City of Leeds is superimposed. This is a fact, not a theory, or a point of view, and airbrushing this out for conveinience and/or prestige is not the proper way to write an encyclopedia and is not doing the region any favours. --Jza84 |  Talk  21:12, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I would agree what has gone on has done nothing for the article. It reads like a long list of statistics and accolades trying to prove some sort of point. There is constant use of redundant peacock language. It alternates between having confused scope and being too heavily biased towards the centre. It it too bloated, with excessive detail on the main article and daughter articles that are underdeveloped and share the confusion of scope.

The summary of events by Razorlax is false. "99%" "core policies" we keep on hearing this again and again but it has no substantive basis. Several editors have responsded to your claims but you ignore or dismiss them.

Leeds district is a statistical unit with a local authority, lots of data and information is produced relating to it, it does not mean that the settlement of Leeds does not exist. It is not the job of the encyclopedia to mirror misconceptions of Leeds and City of Leeds being the same thing. MRSC (talk) 21:35, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi MRSC. The article reads in the same way as the articles for birmingham, manchester, liverpool, london, new york etc etc. All cities have a lead that essentially tells the reader where the city's standing is within the country. At the very least all the senetences are well sourced. Some articles like manchester, whose lead reads like a marketing pamphelt, with a sizeable chunk unsourced, even has FA status. However that said, there is nothing to stop editors altering things if they feel it is peacock statements, and the assertion that the article has some peacock statements bears no relation to whether the article should be merged or split.

You assert that the core policy breach argument has no substantive babsis and that several editors have responded to these claims. Really? Please point to these refutals. An editor simply saying "that is not true" is not a refutal of a comprehensive catalogue of evidence. It would be helpful if you were to refute the core-policy-breach argument now and lay it to rest, if indeed it has no basis.

With regards to the misconception, what is the misconception actually? That the word "Leeds" in majority usage and even official ONS usage refers to the city and metropolitan borough rather than the settlement within? Using wiki policy, we must take the widely accepted name. The word "London" in majority and official usage refers to greater london not the city of london incidently, and the widely accepted name has been used here. Yes there is a case for an article about the urban-subdivision that lies within Leeds(city & metropolian borough) but it really needs to have a suitable article name that reflects its content, eg Leeds Urban Subdivision or Leeds, settlement etc. --Razorlax (talk) 22:14, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

You ignored my points. I also want to ask you again (incase you missed it) if you are the same person as wiggleyleeds? I presume WP:PLACE and WP:OR form the 1% too regarding your new place called "Leeds, settlement" (which also shows that you yourself concede such a place exists!).... --Jza84 |  Talk  22:18, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

MRSC, the main problem with your last paragraph is that what you call a misconception is in fact just a POV different from yours. I can understand the POV that "Leeds" is just the settlement. But the POV that "Leeds" is the City of Leeds is equally valid, and it seems impossible to prove one or the other with reliable sources. The overwhelming majority of uses of the word "Leeds" is ambiguous and tends to be interpreted as confirmation by people of either POV.

There is plenty of unambiguous evidence that the City of Leeds is often referred to as just "Leeds" even in relatively formal contexts. Just look at www.leeds.gov.uk. There is also plenty of evidence that "Leeds" can refer to something much smaller, although usually in relatively informal contexts (e.g.: "I am commuting from Otley to Leeds") and only rarely in a way that implies a clear definition of Leeds as a settlement (as opposed to the city centre, for example). This is a natural consequence of the settlement's inexistence as a legal entity and the existence of a larger entity that has usurped or inherited most of the former smaller city's existence in symbol space (city status, similar name, Lord Mayor etc.).

As far as I know there is no reliable source that tries to decide between the competing answers to the question "what does 'Leeds' mean in a formal, but otherwise unspecified, context?" Let alone an authoritative one. Therefore we, as Wikipedia, cannot settle the question. What we can do is follow the lead of other reliable sources and be as ambiguous about the meaning of "Leeds" as is usual, while being careful not to say anything that is plain wrong under one of the POVs. Leeds as an article on the settlement only was in contradiction to WP:NPOV. Leeds can be either a single article discussing both aspects, or a disambiguation page. As a mergist I prefer a single article, especially since the two aspects tend to complement each other. (Nightlife, sports, culture is essentially about the settlement; administrative and statistical information is essentially about the metropolitan district.) It also saves us some duplication, reduces confusion for readers not used to the distinction, and gives us a natural place for discussing and illuminating the problem to the extent that we can, without too much OR. On the other hand I am not surprised if editors who love lists and infoboxes prefer two separate articles for systematic reasons.

We must discuss this, but we must discuss the problem itself fairly. I hope that we can move away from the discussion of editors or city rivalries, and also from unfair methods such as canvassing or debating to win, rather than resolve. Hans Adler 22:39, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

This is an intellectually weak arguement: "I can understand the POV that "Leeds" is just the settlement. But the POV that "Leeds" is the City of Leeds is equally valid." - this is a pluralism that just isn't true. If there is a settlement called Leeds in the City of Leeds, then all other bets are off (so to speak); the truth is apparent; that there is a place called Leeds is either true or isn't - it's not a POV, it's a fact that even the merger camp concede from time to time.

Also, perhaps Salford, Greater Manchester and City of Salford should be merged to "save us some duplication"? Or Rochdale and Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale (and Rochdale (ancient parish) and County Borough of Rochdale and Rochdale (UK Parliament constituency) and even Rochdale F.C.)?

The only people who are bringing up "city rivalries" are those from the merge camp (just read the external forum to see the real intentions - apparently KeithD (talk · contribs) is a "traitor" for not wanting Leeds to be like Manchester!!!). I'm actually here to improve Leeds. If anyone doubts that I'm not capable of writing excellent articles about places and cities, I suggest you ask WP:GM - I simply don't see the same dedication or experience from those on the opposite side of the fense, but instead see a confused bunch who can't agree on why the verifiable, the policy-bound can't be published and improve their abode on Wikipedia. --Jza84 |  Talk  22:52, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I wish that you would restrict your comments to the subject and not the contributors. It is regrettable that some people on an outside forum chose to make personal attacks on some WP editors, but the debate here should not stoop to that level. I too have only the desire to see Wikipedia be the best it can be. I have never lived in Leeds, and have rarely visited the place. Throughout the discussions on this issue you have repeatedly insinuated that those people who disagree with your opinions are in some way stupid. It pains me to come to the level of justifying myself but I am a PhD scientist, it is a significant part of my job to search out and evaluate sources, and I have written and published many articles in peer reviewed journals. I am not stupid, I just disagree with you on this particular issue. I have also been a significant contributor to a similar article to this that is currently a featured article, so the model I support is just as capable of producing good articles as the model you support. There is no reason why both models can't co-exist as they do now. Hans Adler makes a perfectly valid point--where there is ambiguity it is often impossible for one side to win the argument. The best solution is always to present the ambiguity, citing verifiable facts that support all points of view --tackling the ambiguity head on. I agree with Hans that a single article would be the best forum to do this. As I understood it MRSC suggested the draft articles in order to show how the two article solution could do this--I assumed that at some point the draft articles would be declared ready for comment at which point we could further discuss their merits/flaws. My strong reaction today is against the suggestion that these drafts should be moved to the main article space with no further discussion. —Jeremy (talk) 23:21, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

This is simply not true. Jza84 has never said or implied that you or anyone contributing to the encyclopaedia is 'stupid'. He has questioned the motives of some contributors, and this has been with good reason given the evidence we have found. I do not see any evidence that JeremyA was implied or stated to be acting in bad faith and the fact that you feel affronted by what Jza84 has said is very unfortunate, but I just don't see how you have been implicated in this way. P.S. I am also a PhD researcher, so you are in good company! MRSC (talk) 08:13, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Nowhere do I attack JeremyA, and will state it here plainly that I wasn't nor won't attack him. I am attacking the nameless cowards who used the forum to degenerate Wikipedia; it's unforgivable. And a P.S. from me: I have the letters MBA, PGdip, BA (Hons), Dip appended to my name too! --Jza84 |  Talk  12:32, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

You may not have intended it, but your characterisation of "those on the opposite side of the fence" as a "confused bunch" can only be seen as including myself and other editors such as Hans Adler and Quantpole. As can be seen, there are intelligent people on all sides of this debate. I don't think that we are actually that far from each other in our opinions of what Leeds is or is not--the real disagreement is on how to report that here, meaning that there is a good chance of finding a compromise that satisfies the majority of editors, so long as we try to avoid bickering. —Jeremy (talk) 15:11, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

If it has not been stated explicitly before I will say it now: there has been no suggestion (either from me or perceived by me) that those established editors who have supported a merge have been counted in the same category as those who have come here with a single purpose, have used external websites to recruit others, or have come here based on that recruitment. It is regrettable that the established editors and this external group shared a community of purpose, but that was a co-incidence and the motivations of the established editors are clearly to write the best encyclopaedia possible. That we have allowed this incident to degenerate to this squabbling and distrust demonstrates to me the extent to which this external group has undermined our processes and has muddied the waters. Let's get back to the community project this is supposed to be and all be willing to identify where bias is being unfairly introduced, even where it co-incidentally agrees with our own views. MRSC (talk) 15:41, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Some of the "confused bunch" are good faith editors who are just weary of the fray and see their time as being better spent elsewhere. Look at the article's edit history stats.--Harkey (talk) 16:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd just like to say that I had no idea of that discussion, and have no idea who here was. I'd hope that those of us who have been working here in good faith don't get caught in the crossfire, and our opinions ignored as a result. I can totally understand the reaction from MRSC and Jza84, but I think we were actually getting somewhere in a relatively (for this article) calm manner. If we could try and keep any shitstorm as a result separate from this process then that would be lovely. Quantpole (talk) 23:15, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Razorlax can't with one breath say that the article was improved by a merge and then, faced with evidence to the contrary, say the state of the article has nothing to do with the merger. Just because a lot of sources are written about the City of Leeds it does not mean that Leeds itself does not exist. Everyone seems to agree that Leeds (settlement) has some independent existence and the Ordnance Survey maps agree; you even suggest this as an article title for it! This whole argument boils down to what appears on the Leeds article space, and it is clear that you will accept nothing less than a copy of Manchester with the word "Leeds" substituted for it and the relevant statistics amended. Well, Leeds and Manchester are different; they have different histories and geographies and you cannot translate one onto the other. MRSC (talk) 05:49, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. The evidence is irrefutable that there is a distinct place called Leeds, and the suggestions that we have a Leeds (settlement) or Leeds (urban area are effectively what should be Leeds, West Yorkshire per WP:PLACE.

I'm sorry I think you are misinterpreting me here. All I want is for the article to adhere to core policy by having any article titled Leeds to comply with naming convention so that when readers visit Leeds it discusses the official and non official interpretation of what Leeds is, a city and metropolitan borough, which is also, what people expect. You have to remember that if people thought of "Leeds" as meaning a settlement within City of Leeds, there would be much more non governmental sources and non-official websites available that discuss Leeds in this context. The number of websites organically builds up over time over things that are important to people. And if lots (more than 10%) of websites did indeed discuss Leeds in a context of being a settlement within CityOfLeeds, then the wiki article should reflect this too. I also disagree with your assertion that the article has deteriorated. That is POV. The article is now about the city and metropolitan borough, and imo the lead should match the style of other FA articles for cities, like Sheffield, or any other city, which as well as some history will include the city's place within a wider context, as well as anything unique about the city. Sheffield has more trees than any other city in europe, and its GVA is higher than the yorkshire average. Has this made the article deteriorate? One of Leeds' positive characterists as a city is that it has become an important centre for business, financial, and legal services in the UK. Is thi deterioration? Is this your argument for why the article should be split? You do know that such phrases were in the split article, and can have just as mcuh potential of being included in a split article as they can a merged one - which is why I cant see your point here. --Razorlax (talk) 17:05, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm concerned too that a large subcontext of the debate (backed up by the sentiments in the forum) seem to revolve around Manchester and that I'm perhaps I'm acting in bad faith to "undermine" Leeds away from utopian Manchester. Well, for the record I'm not from Manchester, I wasn't born in Manchester, I don't live in Manchester; I was born in Neilston (Scotland) and live in Shaw and Crompton (just) not far from Denshaw; I live in a Pennine suburb. My work has been concentrated in places I've worked, but I also edit pages of regional and national importance.

Manchester is different to Leeds. It was expanded through extention bills, and the LGA72 hardly touched it. It does not contain freestanding towns, parishes with town councils, a large rural hinterland, and definately doesn't contain former municipal boroughs or even any other former urban districts. The same is true of Liverpool. Leeds would be better telling its story by telling the truth - that it is the predominant urban part of a major English city, with a history that is seperate of its outlying towns... just like Salford, Greater Manchester (though that's part of a "minor" English city by all accounts!). --Jza84 |  Talk  12:32, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Again, because it seems I am not getting through with the information: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. It's perfectly normal for an encyclopedia to discuss two or more separate but strongly related topics in a single article. In cases such as Leeds, where there is widespread confusion about the extent to which various meanings of a word overlap, this is the general practice. I doubt that Encyclopedia Britannica Online been taken over by inhabitants of Leeds who try to make the city bigger than it is ("urban area, city, and metropolitan borough, metropolitan county of West Yorkshire, historic county of Yorkshire, England." [9]). The following are some of the advantages, in this particular case, of discussing the two separate topics in a single article:

• We have a natural place for discussing the relation between the several meanings of "Leeds".
• We avoid uncertainties about the placement of information that follow from the fact that our sources are almost unanimous in not distinguishing clearly between the metropolitan district and the settlement. Concrete example: Town twinning. ("Leeds" is twinned with several towns. Which Leeds? Officially it's the City of Leeds = metropolitan district. The fact that Otley has its own twins demonstrates that town twinning is actually regarded as something that happens on the level of the settlement. The twins were listed in both articles.)
• We avoid confusing our readers by continuously referring to a city that is not a settlement but a metropolitan district, and a settlement that doesn't actually exist as a political or legal entity.
• We avoid giving the distinction between the city and the settlement undue weight. I have seen no reliable source at all that stresses this distinction. With a single article we can say in the lead that "Leeds" can refer to the City of Leeds or to the dominating settlement within it. Later on, we can distinguish where this makes sense. This is the right amount of weight: Just about as much as we can justify giving the absence of good sources on the topic. With separate articles we are forced to violate WP:NPOV by continuously and structurally stressing one POV on a contentious question that our sources are generally silent upon.

The way "Leeds" is used overwhelmingly in most contexts, it is either the City of Leeds or an ill-defined cloud, with maximum density in the city centre. That's why Britannica can say that "Leeds" is an urban area and a metropolitan borough. That's why people living in Otley live "in Leeds" when talking to someone in Australia, but commute "to Leeds" for shopping. We need a single article about this cloud; not one article about the well-defined area inside the boundaries that demarcate it from the neighbouring clouds, and a second article about an area approximating the central region where humidity is above 80%.

As a hopefully illustrative example from a totally different field: There is disagreement about whether the "natural numbers" should include 0 or not. Reliable sources are divided about equally in this matter. Thus depending on the definition the natural numbers are the numbers 1,2,3,4,... or the numbers 0,1,2,3,4,.... Yet we correctly discuss both meanings in a single article natural number. This is not an attempt to push a POV that it doesn't really matter, or that 0 is a natural number (because it's covered in the article). It's the only reasonable solution. Everything else would be a disservice to our readers. Hans Adler 07:27, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Hans - very well said. I strongly support your points: readers will be best served by a single "Leeds" article for the reasons you give. PamD (talk) 07:31, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Readers will be poorly served by a single Leeds article for precisely no reasons, because evidence attests that it should not appear in our encyclopedia, per the multiple examples to references, conventions, examples of best practice elsewhere, a proof-of-concept draft etc etc. It is presently a catch-all POV mess (based on the falsehood that the LGA72 expanded Leeds) that reads like a tourist guide for central Leeds, with no coherant or proportionate coverage of the outlying towns. Han's comment is based purely on his own POV - arguments that could be argued just as much for Salford or Rochdale as much as they could for Leeds. I maintain it is intellectually weak. --Jza84 |  Talk  10:14, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the current article, reads like a tourist guide for central Leeds, with no coherant (sic) or proportionate coverage of the outlying towns. This is not a reason for splitting the article into two - more a reason for improving all areas of the current article. The argument is that after the LGA72 the appellation Leeds was afforded to a different entity. Hans is making the point that the article needs to discuss, and editors/users need to come to terms with the different uses of the appellation and this is best done in a single article.--Harkey (talk) 11:28, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

The average user searching for Leeds is looking for the city, not the metropolitan county, there are articles on the market towns of Rothwell, Morley, Pudsey, Wetherby, towns Otley, Horsforth, Yeadon, Guiseley, villages of Harewood, Bramhope, Arthington, Pool in Wharfedale all of which need developing. Surely a city has suburbs not towns and villages. To me this shows Leeds is a city within a metropolitan county. A single article would do neither the city nor the metropolitan county justice. --J3Mrs (talk) 12:12, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Just to clear up confusion: the metropolitan county is/was West Yorkshire. The "City of Leeds" entity is a Metropolitan District/Borough. PamD (talk) 12:33, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

A place can be both a town or village and a suburb. Urban geography is messy with no definitive answer to what something is, especially when we get up to the scale of settlements like Leeds. Once we start talking about places rather than administrations, they are only defined by peoples' attitudes and opinions about it. The Ordnance Survey uses the phrase 'vernacular geography' to describe this. I can collect many sources that describe most of those places listed as suburbs (I haven't looked at every one), and I can also find ones that describe them as villages or towns. The point that is being made by Hans Adler above is what do you do about this fuzziness of place? Do you just ignore it, as the old Leeds article did, or do you try and accomodate it all within one article that explains the situation and informs our readers? Quantpole (talk) 12:55, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Jza84, the draft is no "proof of concept" whatsoever. At the moment it is falling over itself to avoid useful sources which talk about Leeds in terms of the borough. It ends up being an article mainly about the city centre, which we already have. Yes it looks neater and tidier, but that's the benefit of starting from scratch. We could start the current article from scratch and have something that looks just as good, and would still be NPOV, because it addresses the issue head on rather than trying to avoid it. I'm going to try looking at the draft article when I have time, to try and alleviate some of the concerns, but I am still rather of the opinion that the end result will not benefit the reader at all. Quantpole (talk) 13:04, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Far from being "intellectually weak" I think that the debate has been taken a step up the intellectual ladder by steering away from the yes it is, no it isn't and two million smokers can't be wrong level to a let's have an article which discusses the dilemma. This is intellectual maturity. For proof hat a dilemma exists, there is no need to look further than this page. Apart from references to infantile bickering, which most contributors deplore, there is evidence of a genuine desire to give our readers a rounded perspective on the topic.--Harkey (talk) 13:31, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

By "infantile bickering" I presume you mean those POV warriors who shared their intentions here and not those who cite sources, examples, conventions, take time to write drafts, have experience with GAs and FAs?? Because, I certainly didn't or wouldn't stoop low enough to organise edit wars to blatently "inflate" a city in what's meant to be a serious educational tool. You're missing the point: for example, Hans Alder's comments are based on the Encyclopedia Britannica (a tertiary source, thus not reliable), which also merges all settlements that are named for a borough (Wigan being an example, Salford, another). So, I don't just dismiss his point in a crude "immature" way, I question it (because it cannot be true) and take my own time to use critical thinking and sound investigation to break it down to help overturn this silly and stubborn perspective that Leeds is a special case, above the scrutinisation of all other settlements, and then share this with the team here. So, what do those who support Hans's apparent authority say to this? Ignore the fact it is baseless? Probably... It's just another new, more desperate and obscure way of circumventing what Leeds is - the major urban part of the City of Leeds. Not only have all users conceded that this is true and verifiable (but somehow Leeds should be kept merged because what? -- "all readers want this"!?), the present "merged" article lead states it too, but then the prose just focusses on central Leeds. What do those who seem to oppose anything I type say to that? -- that it is not true no doubt.... --Jza84 |  Talk  16:21, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think he was referring to you, but rather being thankful that this conversation has generally been on reasonable terms compared to the previous one. There are numerous editors who in good faith disagree on the best way to handle this situation. This is not being 'silly' or 'stubborn' but a simple disagreement on how to approach the problem that we have here. Quantpole (talk) 16:35, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

The only silliness and stubbornness that I am observing on this talk page is that originating from editors who (1) deny that reasonable minds can disagree about whether "Leeds" is best covered in a single article or in more than one; (2) are making efforts to personalise the conflict; and/or (3) think that ad hominems are OK so long as you use the less precise expression "intellectually weak" rather than the more usual words "stupid" or "dishonest".

Your position seems to be that if one word is commonly used for two different but related things, then it's absolutely necessary to cover these things with separate articles; that everything else would be lying. From your POV the only problem appears to consist in unreasonable editors who don't see this truth. OK, I will help you. Here is how you can prove you are right. Identify a high-profile article that has the same problem. I have already given an example in a section further up that has been condensed: France. Obviously this should really be France (country) and France (geography). The former includes Réunion (which is off Madagascar), the latter doesn't. Another example is Rome. This one is truly atrocious. Apparently our article on Rome has been written by Italian nationalists who want to annex a complete sovereign state into their country by identifying the Italian city with the larger settlement! ("Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest [...] municipality [...]. [...] Rome [...] is [...] the site of Vatican City, an independent city-state run by the Catholic Church.") This obviously must be disentangled into Rome (municipality) and Rome (settlement), the latter including the Vatican. Now I suggest you go to one of these more high-profile articles and come back here once you have solved the 'problem'. Since your POV is so unquestionably the only one that makes sense (according to you), you are sure to get a lot of support for splitting those articles.

Should you, for any reason, decide not to take up this challenge, please explain why. Be sure to avoid all arguments that might be called "intellectually weak". Hans Adler 08:58, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Leeds is hardly a state-within-a-state or a country with overseas possessions. This argument has deviated quite some way from the task in hand. MRSC (talk) 14:58, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Again, the evidence I showed about Britannica and how only Leed's lead was merged has been ignored, and instead another, new interpretation of why Leeds should be treated differently has been presented. I'm confident in the evidence I, and others, have shared in this section and so won't repeat myself or rise to further opposition in this section. I will be moving back to the drafts. --Jza84 |  Talk  15:04, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Wow, Jza, such a complete failure to respond in a meaningful way. Absolutely astonishing. It's hard to resist using your favourite expression "intellectually weak" in this situation where it actually applies, since your response is either incredibly stupid or incredibly dishonest.

MRSC, what happens if I find a similar example affecting a city? I guess you will claim it's on the wrong continent, too big, or too small. If I find one of the right size in the UK you will dismiss it because it's in Wales or Scotland, not in England, or because it's not in West Yorkshire. Aren't you feeling a bit silly even now, before you have forced me to go to the trouble of digging up all these examples? Hans Adler 15:57, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I think you're completely right Hans. Damn. I can't respond in a meaningful way. All that evidence is wasted. I can't believe I was fooled by all those maps and books and that unchallenged stuff about the encyclopedia Britainnica and the obvious comparisons of Leeds to France. It just completely disproves my case. Even that meatpuppetry was probably my fault too, as I want to ruin Leeds as much as possible. We simply now must not split Leeds, and make proposals to merge all other settlements. I'm sorry I could not respond to your cerebral prowess any fuller, as I felt unable to type anything given my fingers wriddled with humilation and stupidity.... ;P --Jza84 |  Talk  16:24, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

So you really think it's OK for us to "lie" (I think it was your word, or was it MRSC's?) about France and Rome, but we must be much more precise about Leeds? Why? With all your talk about how you are arguing logically and proving conclusively or however you put it, you forget to actually put forth convincing arguments. I am a professional mathematician. Changing my mind in the face of convincing evidence was an important part of my training, and like most mathematicians I do it regularly. I also do it on Wikipedia. I did it here, at this very article: Initially I defended the two-article version. The reason I am not changing my opinion back as a result of what you are saying is that you are not being convincing. You are trying to win a shouting match, rather than arguing logically.

You came here with absurd claims that discussing the two Leeds in a single article is necessarily strongly POV. I refuted your claims by pointing to the fact that Britannica does just that. Do you really think "Encyclopedia Britannica (a tertiary source, thus not reliable), which also merges all settlements that are named for a borough" was a convincing refutation of my refutation? Really? One that one must bother to respond to? You could have claimed that Britannica is under the control of a conspiracy that tries to make Leeds appear more important than it is. That would have been more convincing.

It's impossible to argue constructively with someone who isn't even able to argue constructively themselves. The funny thing is that, predictably, you are going to agree with this statement. We would need a referee to get us out of this dilemma. A referee who decides which of us is talking sense and which of us is being stupid. How about asking an Arbcom member to do us the favour? I don't care which one, you can choose freely. Hans Adler 16:57, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

This conversation has become needlessly adversarial and I am quite upset about it. Nothing but bad feeling is being created and there really is no reason for it. Everyone is here to do a good job and collaborate. I would suggest that any continuation of this thread is restricted to content only. MRSC (talk) 19:36, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Firstly and just briefly, can we all just stick to refuting arguments we disagree with without getting personal. We dont have to hate each other for disagreeing with viewpoints, it is healthy discussion on a talk page. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that the reason I myself didnt refute the Britannica argument is because I didnt see it as an argument. If anything it supports the viewpoint that settlements and districts can be spoke about together if appropriate. Looking to Encylopedias was the first thing that was done, and the overwhelming maority either pointed to dicsussing leeds as a City&MetropolitanBorough, or in a minority of cases, like Britannica, discussing leeds as a City&MetropolitanBorough and Urban Area. None reffered to discussing Leeds as just a settlement. Yes, an argument can be put forward that Brittanica doesnt have the pages to discuss this as seperate articles. However it could also be said that perhaps Britannica didnt think it was of any benefit, discussing essentialy the same thing in two seperate articles. --Razorlax (talk) 19:14, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Maybe we need to remember what is the actual difference between a split and merged article. Very little infact. Only the population figure is different, the mention that leeds is a city and met borough, and the fact that a merged article makes mention of urban, suburban, and rural element of the city (which all have their own pages, as they have always done). Other than that, both articles focus in the same depth on arts, culture, education, notable people, places of interest, sporting success etc etc etc - it is all identical, and which all stems from the central area of leeds. The only difference is the history section in the merged article also includes mention of the 1972 transfer of city status. A merged article doesnt *lose* anything. I think Jza's argument is that such a merged article should discuss Leeds through a district perespective, given that historically the Leeds that exists today came about through the merging of different settlements - one of them the original county borough. The flaw with this argument is that we lose discussing the article as how we are supposed to - through the perspective of what Leeds is today, how it is seen, how it is officially interpreted to be by government, and how it is seen by all types of sources, leaving its formation and how it came into being for the history and geography subsections of the article. This is why the draft article lacks any "substance" because to be true to what the draft is about (the historic settlement) - it reads like a history lesson, it cannot discuss Leeds as what it is today. --Razorlax (talk) 19:14, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you Jza that historically Leeds has arisen very differently to say Manchester as you have previously said. The particulars of how Leeds came to be as a city with large boudaries that incorporates several distinct towns is included both in the lead, and in the history section of Leeds, the geography and places in leeds sections, as well as fuller specfics in the Government of Leeds section, - although MRSC has done a brilliant job in improving this section that is presently residing at the CityOfLeeds/draft currently. Nowhere are we trying to hide the reality of how Leeds came about. The article provides an excellent base to navigate to disticnt localities within the city if one so desires, whether those localities be headingley(pre-1974-part-of-the-city), or horsforth(post-1974-part-of-the-city). --Razorlax (talk) 19:14, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Next I want to again touch on opinion and empathy rather than stick to arguments based on wiki policy etc as I generally do. I think it is important to explain why there are differences in opinion to help reach resolution. Now Jza84, I know your persepctive is different on what Leeds is to others on here, and you see it very much a district, and as such should be interpreted in that way when writing about Leeds, but I would like to give a background as to why interpreting Leeds in this district way is so alien, and why relatively speaking, virtually no sources describe it as being such. Take most Leeds residents, they see Leeds as being all the continuous built up urban area, as well as any suburban areas that do not have large distinct historic centres, and are more residential suburban than anything else. This means, everything within the adiminstrative boundary is seen as leeds with the exception of otley and wetherby etc, and the collection of villages etc. Continuous built up urban areas of Leeds such as morley, pusdey, horsforth etc are all very much Leeds proper, and are seen as no less a distinct part of Leeds, than say Headingley. That doesnt mean to say these areas do not have their historic identities, like headingley equally does too, and these areas all have their own small wiki page too btw like any other area of leeds. It just means they are very much a residential area of leeds as any other area such as cross gates or middleton for example. This means that, population-wise, around 90% of the population of Leeds, lives in leeds proper, the area associated as being the city. Therefore, to completely dissolve this cohesive city, that all actually falls under a City boundary (lets not forget that), and to interpret and write about it in a district sense based on historical notions, whilst completely ignoring what Leeds is interpreted as being today both officially, non-officially, and by people too today, is wrong. The 90% marker is incidently around the percentage as what exists for both sheffield and birmingham for example, in terms of what is city proper and what is added subdivisions that were incorporated into the area that has city status. And lets not forget, if people really did think of Leeds more in a district sense, there would be a hell of a lot more articles portraying leeds in this way, not virtually none on the whole internet (which even surprised me lol !) --Razorlax (talk) 19:14, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Another reason why the concept is seen as alien, is because of two factors. (1) the 1974 act occured in 1974 :P , and so anyone 35 years old or under has only ever known suburban localities such as morley as being in Leeds - and (2) the way the UK economy has shifted in the last 30 years has dramatically changed the functionality of areas that were once very much their own town centres that had for example small industrial or textile economies. Such areas all across the uk now are nothing more than residential areas where people live and whose only connection to any locality is with that of their nearest city centre. Only places that still have a large enough commerical centre and are far enough away from the city centre or urban part of the city, retain their seperateness in people's phsyche, such as wetherby Razorlax (talk) 19:14, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

To do lists

Might be a good idea this stage to create Talk:Leeds/draft/to do and Talk:City of Leeds/draft/to do and then work through point by point. MRSC (talk) 05:14, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Return to content

I propose we discuss Talk:Leeds/draft and Talk:City of Leeds/draft. We need to decide what needs to be added to these article in order for them to be satisfactory to go live instead of what we have now. MRSC (talk) 17:25, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Please can this:

1207 to 1626 Leeds manorial borough → was within Leeds manor → which was within Leeds parish →

1626 to 1836 all the above were included in Leeds (incorporated borough) (which purchased the manorial rights) → which was abolished

1836 to 1889 the above was then included in Leeds Municipal Borough → which was abolished

1889 to 1974 the above was then included in Leeds County Borough → which was abolished

1974 to date the above was included in Leeds Metropolitan County which is extant and is within Leeds City Region.

The Leeds manor just about equates with Leeds City Centre and the Leeds parish (with big tweaks) equates with the Leeds (incorporated borough).

be made clearer somewhere?--Harkey (talk) 18:04, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

It almost needs to be made as simple as the above précis, completely bomb proof, not redirects because the majority of edits to the Leeds articles are impulsive IP "corrections" based on misconceptions about the content of the article. The simpler, the better.--Harkey (talk) 18:32, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

PS to above. That makes about 10 definitions of Leeds, not counting the urban area!! No wonder there is a debate.--Harkey (talk) 18:48, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I've added the text to the history sections. I was meaning to summarise the County Borough of Leeds article now it is fully expanded. MRSC (talk) 18:36, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

• Leeds telephone code
• Leeds post town
• Leeds postcode area
• Leeds metropolitan district
• Leeds parliamentary constituencies
• Leeds ONS subdivision
• Leeds City Region
• Leeds township
• Leeds borough I
• Leeds borough II
• Leeds county borough (various boundaries)
• Leeds rural district
• Leeds registration district
• Leeds built up area
• Leeds city centre
• Leeds Poor Law area
• Leeds improvement commissioners area

I can make seventeen. :) MRSC (talk) 19:05, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I would like for Wikipedia to 'win' this discussion. To me Wikipedia winning means that this debate is put to bed for good. It should be clear to all involved by now that if the changes that are implemented leave one side in the debate the 'winner' then this debate will not go away and ultimately Wikipedia is the loser. I think that the pragmatic approach is to work towards a solution that leaves the maximum possible number of the participants in this debate feeling that if even they haven't got their first choice solution, they have got something that they can work with. Reading the drafts it strikes me that Talk:Leeds/draft is not really all that different to the article currently at Leeds, and Talk:City of Leeds/draft is not really all that different to the article currently at Government of Leeds. In fact take off the lead sections and titles of the two draft articles and there is really very little that I disagree with.

Starting with Talk:City of Leeds/draft --Even if we move Leeds (disambiguation) to Leeds, the draft, as written, implies to me that the 'correct' usage of the term Leeds is to refer to a subsection of the City of Leeds and not the city itself. I think that we have come to general agreement that for the majority of reliable sources, when they use the term Leeds they are using it to refer to the city. I feel that it is important for the draft to reflect this if it is to be adopted. In other subjects where disambiguation is used it is common to have one article that starts "X is Y", and another article that starts "X is Z", therefore I think it not unreasonable to start this article 'Leeds is a local government district of West Yorkshire, England, with the status of a city and metropolitan borough' even if we have another article that starts with Leeds is something else. In fact I would prefer the title of this draft article to be something like 'Leeds (city)' or 'Leeds (district)' to reflect the most commonly used name for the district. If the urban core of the city is to be referred to as "the principle settlement of the district" and named Leeds, it needs a better reference than Van den Berg 2006, p. 179. --this page of this book uses the word Leeds 19 times, in 18 of these uses it is clear that the authors mean the city, there is just one use where they use it in such a way as to suggest that the word could mean a sub-section of the city. This single use of the word is ambiguous and certainly does not provide support for the claim of there being a principle settlement called Leeds. If we could consider an alternate title, and be more ambiguous about what the thing at the core of the district is I would not dispute it being moved into article space.

Talk:Leeds/draft--This draft is very careful to be ambiguous about what exactly its subject is, and within the text I am happy to see that it tells us what the population statistics quoted refer to. However, the infobox makes no such attempt to explain the statistics. I am OK with that if the article is moved into the article space at 'Leeds (urban subdivision)' and we make it clear that the article is about the ONS urban subdivision, but if the article is to be about an area with undefined boundaries all statistics such as area, population, population density etc. need to be qualified so that it is clear to the reader what it is that the statistics refer to.

In general I feel that the amount that all sides have to move from their starting positions to come up with a workable solution is very small. My preference remains for a single main article that includes a summary of the different conceptions of Leeds, and daughter articles that provide more depth; but with the small changes that I suggest above, I could work with a solution based on these draft articles. —Jeremy (talk) 00:21, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

In addition, we have talked in the past about chapter 17 of A Modern History of Leeds where Owen Hartley discusses the city's identity crisis. I think that it would still be good to have a section of one or both of these articles that discusses this. I can't find it now, but I'm sure that PamD drafted something along these lines at some point in the previous discussions. —Jeremy (talk) 00:38, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

The possibility of renaming City of Leeds to Leeds (district) has come up before and is something I think would go a long way to ending confusion. (I know we have a naming convention, but to be honest the same problem has occurred with other places and I sometimes wish we had set up local government disambiguation differently).

Renaming Talk:Leeds/draft to Leeds (urban subdivision) I am uneasy with. It would focus too much attention on Leeds as a statistical unit. I can't see the likes of West Yorkshire Urban Area having a landmarks, sports or culture section. Renaming this article would put it in the same category. Renaming to Leeds, West Yorkshire would free up Leeds for something else.

Fraser, Derek (1982), A History of Modern Leeds also has something to say about confusion of scope of Leeds and a I have paraphrased that in the geography section of Talk:Leeds/draft. I might see if I can find a nice quote to give it more prominence. If it were supplemented by another author it would also help. MRSC (talk) 07:12, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Quote added to Talk:Leeds/draft. MRSC (talk) 07:49, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. All WP conventions are just guidelines and I see no reason to ignore them if there is good reason for doing so. I think that Quantpole's suggestions below would address some of my issues with the Leeds draft. The Derek Fraser book is the same one that I was referring to--Owen Hartley is the chapter author for ch17. —Jeremy (talk) 16:40, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, a few points on the article as it stands. (I was giving it a while, as I wasn't sure how much further work was being done). Sorry if some of this sounds a bit negative - I really do appreciate the effort being put in, but there are a few things that I feel need to be clarified or addressed.

• Infobox. More than one figure should be given for population and area. I realise that it has been clarified as being the urban sub-division (USD), but unless alternatives are given it makes it look like this is the 'official' one. The infobox is the first thing a lot of people see, and not many will have a concept of what a USD is. Giving alternative population figures is very common for large settlements, so I don't think there should be any problem with doing this. I am confused by the postcode district being LS1-LS13 - why is it limited to these?
• City status. What actually happened in terms of what was awarded city status in 1889, and what happened when this was "transferred" to the new borough? The source "City status in the British Isles, 1830-2002" implies that Leeds was a town that was given city status (see page 3 for instance). Would it be correct to say that the town of Leeds was given city status in 1889?
• Lead. Too much of the lead is given to the history of the place, and does not summarise the article.
• Demography. Again this is centred on the USD, giving the impression that this is Leeds. If we are presenting information like this, it should be a range of the available data, not focussing on one of the many entities that could be called Leeds. To avoid having lengthy explanations in the text, I'd suggest footnotes to explain what the different areas mean.
• Landmarks. Seems very focussed on city centre landmarks and I presume this is to be fleshed out.
• Economy. Entirely focussed on the city centre economy. There are other useful sources (like this) which provide much useful information, such as the place of the economy in the country, which is surely relevent to the article. I know that the objection to this will be that the source is about the borough, but without using it we are missing huge chunks out of describing the place. We can certainly describe it as being the data for the whole borough, but to ignore it completely is detrimental to the article.
• Governance. I'm not sure why there is so much detail about the Leeds Central ward, but not the others.

• I can't bear to try to comment in detail yet about the whole split articles, but this is something I'd noticed too: the Leeds Central 'constituency (not ward) is wholly within "Leeds", but however we define "Leeds" it certainly includes part, at least, of the Leeds West, North West, North East, East constituencies, and we'd have to look carefully at boundaries before saying whether or not it includes parts of Pudsey, Elmet & Rothwell, and Morley & Outwood. Hilary Benn is not the only MP for "Leeds", and the wards within Leeds Central are not the only wards in "Leeds". I don't know how we can list which wards are, though! And the statement listing the surrounding wards is wrong, as it should also include Morley and Outwood, round the south. At least. And "Central Leeds has no parishes"... but is Alwoodley in the "Leeds" that this article is about? It has a parish. PamD (talk) 16:17, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

• Transport. I would propose that we say: Leeds Bradford International Airport is located 11 miles to the north east of the city centre, near Yeadon. Previously owned by the five metropolitan councils of West Yorkshire, it was privatised in 2007. The reason for this being that it is debateable whether Yeadon is in Leeds (the settlement) or not, and I was confused by the reference to it being shared between Leeds and Bradford. Quantpole (talk) 14:12, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

My understanding based on Burt & Grady's Illustrated History of Leeds p 19,is that the town of Leeds, then a county borough, applied for city status in 1890 and was turned down, it reapplied in 1893, as the 4th largest municipality in the country. It was granted in Feb 1893. --J3Mrs (talk) 15:44, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Quantpole: I'm not sure if this answers your question or not. City status was announced in the London Gazette on 21 February 1893. "The Queen has been pleased, by Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom, bearing the date the 13th February, 1893 to ordain and declare that the Borough of Leeds shall be a City, and shall be called and styled 'The City of Leeds.'" [10] —Jeremy (talk) 16:23, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

And here is the announcement from 1974: "The Queen has been pleased, by Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the Realm, bearing the date the 1st day of April 1974 to ordain that the Borough of Leeds shall have the status of a City, and that the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of the City of Leeds shall be entitled to the style of Lord Mayor and Deputy Lord Mayor of Leeds." [11] —Jeremy (talk) 16:28, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the great input. I have no argument with any of those points, so I suggest you add in the details you think are missing. MRSC (talk) 16:31, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Great stuff guys. Its good to see everyone has 'given' a little bit, on all sides. I think we all have to compromise a little to get this sorted. Just to clarfify, as I'm confused here. What are we planning to do? As far as I can make out, we are moving towards two possible proposals here (correct me if i am wrong). I think it is important to clarify what these are, as it affects how we edit and contribute to the leeds-draft article.

(1) to make the changes that PamD etc has discussed to leeds-draft, so that the article discusses Leeds in the interpretation of being both City&MetropolitanBorough as well as Settlement, and once we are all satisfied with the draft's contents, to consider moving Leeds-draft to Leeds.

(2) to further ehnance leeds-draft, so it still remains being about the settlement, and to then look at the best name we could give that article to reflect its conents. MRSC suggested Leeds, West Yorkshire. I personally would be happy with that, although I am not sure how that would work? Does that mean when someone types in "Leeds" in wiki, it directs to the current Leeds page, but with a DAB at the top of it to direct them to the settlement page if need be, as well as a link to it in Leeds as soon as the settlement is discussed in the lead so it can take them to the main/expanded page. And if they type in "Leeds, West Yorkshire", it directs to them directly to the settlement page. Or, are we saying when someone types in "Leeds" it would go straight to a DAB page.

Query to the two options above: If we think we will be moving towards option one (discussing both settlement and city in one), isnt that basically the same as the existing Leeds page we have now, the only difference being the info box also shows the urban subdisivion population, and the lead would mention that Leeds can mean both. (and if that is the case, doesnt it already do that in the lead anyway?).

My personal opinion is that by way of compromise on all sides and a necesity for closure, I am inclined to be happy with either option really, as neither proposal breaks core policies either. As for my preferred option, my first thinking was option one as it makes sense to have one all encompassing article. However, after seeing the draft about the settlement, Leeds-draft, it goes into such good depth, that I feel combining this with the current Leeds article means that detail is lost. So I think I prefer option two now, where Leeds, West Yorkshire serves as an expanded in depth article to a summary section of the settlement within Leeds as well as being a DAB at the top of the page. Although, that said, I'd be happy with either. --Razorlax (talk) 19:05, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

As an update I have proposed some structural changes to all the remaining cities/settlements that suffer from this confusion. Hopefully this won't make Leeds seem odd, if, by grace of god, a split happened.

Regarding the content, I still feel that the draft articles are lacking in soul and wow-factor. By their very nature they concentrate on a lot of the banal, and statistics etc. The history and culture element of Leeds is presently very thin. --Jza84 |  Talk  15:08, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

This is true. They are a good structure to hang more content on, but we need to collaborate to get to polished articles. I'd prefer to see other editors editing the articles directly, rather than constructing sentences by committee. Let's get to it! MRSC (talk) 15:24, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Have had a look at the Leeds draft (and added links between the 2 drafts, I hope uncontroversially). There's a problem about listing it as postcodes LS1-13: all or part of LS14-17, at least, is definitely what I think of as "Leeds" (old county borough / south of the ring road / however we're defining it). See useful map at http://www.leeds.gov.uk/maps/leeds_pc.html . Then, as I think was mentioned somewhere else, the Leeds Central constituency only represents a very small element of the city, and all or parts of several other constituencies are undoubtedly "Leeds".

Another interesting point is the x,000 incoming links (I lost track of how often I'd hit "Next 500" on "What links here". These are a motley group (Snowdon Mountain Railway, [{Arcade (architecture)]], History of St Helens RLFC,Alfred Edward Housman, etc etc), and have links to "Leeds" which in every case in my small sample refer to the settlement. A small proportion of more recent articles may intend the metropolitan district as their target. If we split the article, we need to ensure that the links get to the right place, without readers being troubled by a disambiguation page. Many readers will be equally well served by an article about the settlement or a more comprehensive (unsplit) article. Categories (X in Leeds / x from Leeds) are another whole nightmare area. (As is the whole hierarchy of "Yorkshire" categories in some subject areas, as this nonexistent entity does not fit accurately into a hierarchy of modern subdivisions, but that's another story!)

I feel too dispirited by this whole saga to spend much time picking up detailed comments on either of the two drafts, as I keep coming up against problems which make me believe, along with Hans, that the split is not our best way forward. PamD (talk) 16:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Postcodes should include those districts, even those partially included, so they can be added.

But "partially included" in what? As "Leeds" is undefined, how can we define it? PamD (talk) 21:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

The other constituencies are all mentioned in the text, but they also need to go in the infobox (and should be summarised in the article?)

I've noticed the majority of inbound links are still split Leeds and City of Leeds, so that is a good thing. You are right that some of the Leeds links will need checking.

Less than 500, mostly places, stations or schools, are to City of Leeds. The huge majority are to Leeds and need to continue to point to the settlement. PamD (talk) 21:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Category:Leeds and subcategories etc. should always refer to the district. This is the national convention on Wikipedia, same for the daughter articles. MRSC (talk) 19:20, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Good to have that stated, though there's the, perhaps non-standard, Category:People from Leeds (district), with its subset Category:People from Leeds! PamD (talk) 21:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, people being the exception. :) Although the (district) suffix is applied to pretty much all the 326 local government district categories for people. MRSC (talk) 05:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Even if the article is not split the links should go to the right place Leeds or City of Leeds (not piped) and leave it to the redirect so that we have the right information available and know what we are talking about. Keith D (talk) 09:56, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

When I started to make edits to the Religious sites section, I immediately hit the problem of whether a prominent mosque, temple, church or synagogue was in/out of the "Leeds" we are writing about. The most recent and authoritative publication that I have found has devised a system of referring to areas of the City of Leeds as community areas derived from ONS wards and output areas. Is it possible to define "Leeds" from this, please? I really would like to start making constructive edits to a defined "Leeds" area and the book mentioned is a superb source of all sorts of relatively recent information on the 21st Century urban geography.--Harkey (talk) 16:07, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

It's a fabulous book (and the authors were very enterprisingly flogging it from a stall at the Farmers' Market the December it came out, ideal Christmas present material for impossible-to-buy-for people!), but as far as I can see it doesn't anywhere define Leeds as anything smaller than the whole met district, and any attempt to make a list of which community areas are/aren't in "Leeds" would surely be WP:OR and totally unsourceable. PamD (talk) 16:23, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. In places it does refer to the "central wards" but I can't find a list of which these are, and the maps of the central area are also ambiguous in that they include some wards that are clearly on the periphery of the City of Leeds District as well as the amorphous "central area" wards.--Harkey (talk) 16:50, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I've had a go at reformatting Leeds (disambiguation) to make it rather nearer to WP:MOSDAB (thus safer from editing by passing style purists) without losing the content Harkey added.

I'm about to be off-wiki for a week, and would hate to get back and find that any "consensus" had been agreed without me - so let me say now that I strongly believe that the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of "Leeds" is the settlement. Thus either Leeds must be the article on the settlement, with there being a separate one on the met district, or Leeds must be an article on the settlement and the met district combined. I want to speak out very strongly against any idea of Leeds being a dab page, as it will inconvenience many readers. PamD (talk) 19:25, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reformatting. It just needed to be put as simply as possible.--Harkey (talk) 21:29, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Are we ready to move the articles out of draft and into article space, and continue editing there? MRSC (talk) 08:28, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Hang on a second, I thought the two drafts were going to be proof of concepts so we have something tangible to help with the discussion on whether the current Leeds should be split. However am I correct in my understanding that you just want bypass this against any concensus and just move it over? It has already been shown there are lot of editors here who would be unhappy with that. If the Leeds draft was to be moved to a live article with the correct name (eg Leeds Urban Subdivision, or Leeds (settlement), or even Leeds, West Yorkshire) I think less people will be against the idea as it would not be breaking nameing conventions and primary topic. --Razorlax (talk) 17:08, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

And there are those of us who would find it unacceptable if the article with the title Leeds was not either an article about the settlement or an un-split article. PamD (talk) 18:06, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I think we need to insert something after "Leeds is" to say what, not just where, it is - not a hill, a monument, a shopping mall etc.. I've had a go, producing "Leeds (pronounced /ˈliːdz/ (Speaker Icon.svg listen)) is the major settlement within the City of Leeds" (replacing "Leeds (pronounced /ˈliːdz/ (Speaker Icon.svg listen)) is located within the City of Leeds"). Settlement doesn't seem right, as I think it tends to mean somewhere so small as not yet to be a village, town, city. Could we use "town"? Or even "old-established city"? The article has to say something, and if we agree it now it is less likely to be the target of future edit-warring.

I've now had another go and am happier with this version ("Leeds (pronounced /ˈliːdz/ (Speaker Icon.svg listen)) is a city[2] in West Yorkshire, England and the major settlement within the City of Leeds[3] metropolitan borough" with explanatory footnote about city status). What do people think?

Well we've seen what Jza84 thinks - reverted my edit with comment "totally disagree". We're back at square one, really: impossible to define Leeds. Depressing, isn't it. PamD (talk) 18:52, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Hutchinson's Gazetteer (available as part of KnowUK through many public libraries' online services) says "Industrial city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England, 40 km/25 mi southwest of York, on the River Aire; population (2001) 443,250; metropolitan area 715,400.", recognising that it is a city with a pop of 443k. In normal language, Leeds, the "settlement" which was a key site of the industrial revolution and is now mass of skyscrapers , is a city, although it is only a part of the larger area which now has official city status. I believe that the WP article should say so, and have provided a footnote explaining our use of the term. I won't edit war by reverting Jza84, but would be interested to see other people's views on the two suggested lead sentences. PamD (talk) 20:01, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I also think that the lead needs to have something more to show the historic significance of Leeds: by the late 19th century it must have been the nth largest town in England, where n is pretty small number, and this isn't reflected as yet. I'll try and find some figures - eg populations of towns in 1900. PamD (talk) 09:45, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Lead.Is the subject of the article to be: the area of the pre 1974 county borough, the urban area as defined by the OPCS, or the vernacularly recognised settlement? At the moment the content seems to be a mixture of all three. Is this acceptable?--Harkey (talk) 12:13, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Not only is this mixture of all three acceptable, it is typical of articles about UK geography. MRSC (talk) 13:30, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I was under the impression that the whole reason we were having this debate was that the vernacular meaning of Leeds was different to the administrative one, so I would presume it is the vernacular that the article is about. The difficulty we have is that there is no definition of the vernacular settlement, and no data that goes with it. The article that MRSC (mainly) produced seems to be based on an exclusive definition - i.e. only including those areas that were within the old Borough - which leads to an over emphasis on the ONS sub-urban data and info about the city centre, as those are the only things that we have information for that do not include outlying areas that may not be Leeds. (Gosh, that's a horribly convoluted sentence, hope what I mean still comes through). If it is determined that there must be a separate article for the vernacular Leeds, I would think it has to be an inclusive approach, including everything but explaining it all as precisely as we can. This way we as editors are not defining something that by default does not have a definition, but letting the information speak for itself. Quantpole (talk) 16:34, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Would the use of the traditional definition as in:

The traditional concept of a town or city would be a free-standing built-up area with a service core with a sufficient number and variety of shops and services, including perhaps a market, to make it recognisably urban in character. It would have administrative, commercial, educational, entertainment and other social and civic functions and, in many cases, evidence of being historically well established. A local network of roads and other means of transport would focus on the area, and it would be a place drawing people for services and employment from surrounding areas. It would often be a place known beyond its immediate vicinity.

from here be of any help?--Harkey (talk) 12:37, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we can use that quote as it is in relation to urban areas, not urban subdivisions. It doesn't apply to the Leeds urban subdivision, but rather to the West Yorkshire urban area. Quantpole (talk) 16:34, 19 October 2009 (UTC) (NB - changed in light of comment below)

That does not follow. Leeds is a urban-subdivision, not a sub-urban area. MRSC (talk) 13:20, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, your right. Got my nomenclature mixed up. Quantpole (talk) 13:30, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Definition If a note to the effect that the traditional definition (quoted above) of the word city, and not the English legal term, is being used in the Leeds article, in much the way that PamD's reverted edit tried to do, and editors feel that using a vernacular concept of the physical area is acceptable as this is commonly used in other UK geography articles, the problem is simply back to split/not split, correct? --Harkey (talk) 14:11, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Description of Leeds

The Council has just produced a draft Core Strategy document (http://www.leeds.gov.uk/Business/Planning/Local_development_framework/Core_Strategy__Preferred_Approach_(LDF).aspx and choose "Core strategy main document" at right) which includes this interesting section (page 9, section 2.2):

Leeds District has a distinctive settlement hierarchy (see diagram below). The main urban area is the most significant part of the settlement hierarchy; it extends to 15,500 ha (28% of the District) and contains 77% of the jobs and 70% of the dwellings. With the City Centre at its heart, the main urban area contains a series of communities and neighbourhoods, which together form the main urban and suburban areas of the city. Surrounding this area are a number of free standing market towns (including Otley and Wetherby). As well as physical separation from the main urban area, the presence of town centres gives these settlements a degree of independence, which warrants recognition as the 2 nd tier of the hierarchy. There are comparisons with the category of “Principal Town” in the Regional Spatial Strategy, although only Wetherby is so defined. There are then a number of smaller settlements identified because they have a population of at least 1500, a primary school and a shop or pub which make up the 3 rd tier of the hierarchy. Finally, the extensive areas of countryside with small villages and hamlets make up the 4 th tier of the hierarchy.

I'm not sure where that gets us, but thought it might be of interest. ("The diagram below" has a list of names of places which form the 2nd and 3rd tiers) I haven't yet found any definition of the 28% of the area which is "the main urban area", though it may turn up (if I've got the stamina to peruse the 148 pages)! PamD (talk) 08:56, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I've just emailed our friendly local planning officer to ask whether she can point me to any public document which defines this 28% "main urban area"! I'll keep you posted. PamD (talk) 09:03, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

And the listing on page 32 of doc (page 33 of pdf), after section 5.2.14, is interesting: it's talking about local centres, and shows which ones are considered to be part of the "Main Urban Area" (eg Adel, Horsforth, Middleton) and which are not (eg Calverley, Woodlesford, Rothwell, Bramhope). PamD (talk) 09:12, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

This is good timing and hopefully a breakthrough. We should incorporate this into Talk:Leeds/draft. MRSC (talk) 11:09, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

City of Leeds

Although we have work to do on Talk:Leeds/draft, I wonder if it is possible to put Talk:City of Leeds/draft into article space now? MRSC (talk) 11:13, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Hang on a minute - once again you are wanting to bypass all the steps you proposed - which others have made an effort to follow in good faith despite not actually wanting your final option, and despite most of us all still against any split article. However we have been prepared to look at two example articles as a proof of concept - nothing more. Once those two proof of concepts are complete, you were going to use them to show wheather a 2-article offers any benefits over the current system (it still seems a tottally poorer concept than what exists now at Leeds) . If there was still fundamental disagreement with what you proposed - which there still is - you were going to consider arbitration.

Those who have contributed to your draft have been under the impression that the draft will be a cath article - a catch all, that explains what Leeds is as both a city and metropolitan borough, a vague bubble area of main urban area as PamD's new find shows, as well as perhaps even this urban subidivision area. In this respect a split article system is still redundent - so why you are suggesting we make CityOfLeeds live again does not make any sense at all. - ALso, Ironically, the current article at Leeds already explains Leeds in the way the Leeds-Draft does, explaining Leeds as being both a city and met borough, as well as meaning the subdivision area. Sentences that explain what PamD has found, that Leeds can also mean thhis urban rump that exludes the outlying rural element can easily be added. Remember, the only difference of contensation to your draft and what is currently at Leeds, is just the lead - which is why even in the unlikely event that people did reach concensus to move over leeds-draft to Leeds we would be loosing all the work that has organicly grown on Leeds by many many editors (as wiki should be), to be replaced by something almost just one person has created. This would be very bad. And it is also why really we should just be looking at how to make a better lead with the existing article at Leeds - a lead that incorporates more of the definitions of Leeds. --Razorlax (talk) 12:19, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

The drafts have satisfactorily demonstrated that the article can and should be split and our conversation has acknowledged the existence of a separate "Leeds" and "City of Leeds". The next step is to put these articles live in article space. If there are things that need to be added or amended, this needs to be done now. Otherwise the drafts should go live into article space and the editing can be done there. Either way, we need some collaboration to get this moving. MRSC (talk) 13:30, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Strongly Oppose As already said, the drafts were to be used as proof of a concept, with a discussion to follow. You want to bypass this discussion and implement something most people are against - with no analysis whatsoever of the advantages or disadvantages of the drafts. Also, the drafts only show that Leeds can exist in a split format (with many problems, and as a poor alternative to what exists now), but the creation of two concept drafts (that people are all still unhappy with) does not automatically mean in any way whatsoever the articles should become live. Thats was to be discussed once the drafts were complete.

The lead of the draft starts Leeds is the major settlement of city of Leeds. This sentence still lacks a single source, and even if one is found, it is still a massive minority point of view, given that Leeds in majority usage means the entire city and met borough. The drafts havent changed in concept from what existed at Leeds when they were in split form, along with all the problems and confusion that came with the split article. To want to go back to a split system, against concensus, to an article that dicusses leeds strongly from a minority point of view, lacking a single source to back it up, and to a system that was shown to cause huge confusion when it existed in that state, is beyong beleif. Why dont you start by listing the advantages you think the concepts show - and out of collaboration you will find all those advantages (if any) can easily be implemented into the existing article at Leeds --Razorlax (talk) 14:28, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

The development of this article has being held up for too long by this pointless, obfuscating discussion. MRSC (talk) 14:47, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Pointless discussion? You are forcing through an article that breaks core policies, has no source to back up the lead, and which historically has shown to cause years of confussion (against one that has caused none). You are attempting to do this without any discussion, and against everyone on here who is not happy with what you are doing. You refuse to enter into discussion about any possible advantages or disadvtanges of the concepts either. You are going against all editing proceudures and protocols of wikipedia --Razorlax (talk) 15:08, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

We are currently working on promoting London from GA to FA. At no point have we had a crisis of confidence over the existence of London and Greater London. A look at your edits reveals your account only exists to revert other editors and make lengthy and non-substantive talk page posts, with a view to presenting Leeds in a certain light. You have made no substantive contributions to the encyclopaedia itself. This is damaging to the project and needs to be resolved. MRSC (talk) 15:18, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Rather than try to attack me personally, why not try to address the issues and points I and numerous other members have made. The fact that I am an editor who focuses on one topic does not detract from the actual points that have been raised that you are unable to address. And with regards to what light Leeds is presented in, is presenting Leeds in the same manner it is presented in other encylopedia, news, the media, government, and 99.6% of all google instances of Leeds, (ie, its majority interpretation in naming convention) bias. And what is damaging to the project is articles that break core policies of Neutrality, and which lack a source to back up the lead, and editors who attempt to force these articles live without discussion and against concensus. --Razorlax (talk) 15:31, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Peer review: automated tips

Suggestions generated by an automatic JavaScript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question.

• Per Wikipedia:Context and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates), months and days of the week generally should not be linked. Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.^[?]n 1969; null
• If there is not a free use image in the top right corner of the article, please try to find and include one.^[?]
• As per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates), dates shouldn't use ^th; for example, instead of (if such appeared in the article) using January 30^th was a great day, use January 30 was a great day.^[?]
• Watch for redundancies that make the article too wordy instead of being crisp and concise. (You may wish to try Tony1's redundancy exercises.)
  • Vague terms of size often are unnecessary and redundant - “some”, “a variety/number/majority of”, “several”, “a few”, “many”, “any”, and “all”. For example, “All pigs are pink, so we thought of a number of ways to turn them green.” 75: "

Many, Many, ALL , All , All , All , Many, Many, Many, all , all , all , all , all , all , all , all , all , all , all , all , all , all , all , all , all , all , all , all , any , any , any , any , any , any , many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many,A number of,Several,Some ,a number of,a number of,a variety of,several,several,several,several,several,several,several,several,several,some ,some ,some ,some ,some ,some ,some ,some ,some ,some " were found.

• Please provide citations for all of the {{fact}}s.^[?]1
• Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 1a.^[?]

You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. MRSC (talk) 16:05, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Current changes

What's going on here? As the current changes are to the non-split article about "city and borough", I don't understand why this:

Leeds is situated in the eastern foothills of the Pennines astride the River Aire whose valley, the Aire Gap, provides a road and rail corridor that facilitates communications with cities to the west of the Pennines. The highest point in the city, at 1,115 feet (340 m), is at its north western extremity on the eastern slopes of Rombalds Moor, better known as Ilkley Moor, on the boundary with the City of Bradford. The lowest points are at around 33 feet (10 m), in the east of the city: where River Wharfe crosses the boundary with North Yorkshire south of Thorp Arch Trading Estate and where the River Aire (at this point forming the City of Wakefield boundary) meets the North Yorkshire boundary near Fairburn Ings.

To the north and east Leeds is bordered by North Yorkshire: Harrogate district to the north and Selby district to the east. The remaining borders are with other districts of West Yorkshire: Wakefield to the south, Kirklees to the south west, and Bradford to the west.

(from [this version] been replaced by

At 53°47′59″N 1°32′57″W (53.799°, -1.549°), and 190 miles (310 km) north-northwest of central London, Leeds is located on the River Aire in a narrow section of the Aire Valley; Leeds is at the eastern foothills of the Pennines, about 206 feet (63 m) above sea level. It forms part of a continuously built-up area extending to Pudsey, Bramley, Horsforth, Alwoodley, Seacoft, Middleton and Morley. Leeds and its environs are found upon a layer of coal measure sandstones. The land use in Leeds is overwhelmingly urban. Attempts to define the exact geographic scope of Leeds have led to a variety of concepts of its extent, varying by context; they include the area of the city centre, the urban sprawl, the administrative boundaries, and the functional region.

It seems to me that the new text is purely about the city centre - indeed it says Leeds is "part of a continuously built-up area....". I haven't the stamina to look through all the massive amount of recent change, which seems inappropriate while we are still looking at the split/non-split debate. PamD (talk) 08:18, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

You need to edit the article if you think things are wrong. This split/non-split debate is just going round in an endless circle with nothing actually getting done to the article. There are serious problems with the prose that need to be addressed. Several sections suffer hugely from having excessive detail and poor structure ( transport / education / culture / sport ). These should be succinct summaries. It is more appropriate to return to improving the article as a collaboration. From that we can learn if it would make more sense to organise things in a different way. MRSC (talk) 08:46, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

The article is impossible to edit unless the area under discussion can be defined, even fuzzily. "Attempts to define the exact geographic scope of Leeds have led to a variety of concepts of its extent, varying by context; they include the area of the city centre, the urban sprawl, the administrative boundaries, and the functional region." So, which is the article about? The statistics refer to an amalgam of ONS "output areas". The text appears to be about a vernacularly defined POV area. Let us into the secret, please, then we can all add useful contributions.--Harkey (talk) 10:44, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Categorically "defining" Leeds, or any other UK settlement for that matter, is impossible. This debate is as pointless as arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. If this was a problem of real substance we would be having the same discussion on every locality article. United Kingdom geography just doesn't work like that, there are no commonly accepted definitions of any localities (aside from units of administration). Each locality article has to handle the fact there are multiple definitions. This circular debate has acted as essentially an embargo on improvement to the article for too long. MRSC (talk) 11:00, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

The defined area is what is already stated in the current lead and still corresponds to the consensus here, that being the lead is a catch all, suggesting Leeds is both a City&MetpropolitanBorough as well as an urban core (with the populaton figure of both quoted). The edits that MRSC has made surprisingly still conform to this. Also, I would reccomend copying what exists in draft-CityOfLeeds to Local Government in Leeds as it is more comprehensive than what is currently at Local Government in Leeds. --Razorlax (talk) 10:56, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

If Talk:City of Leeds/draft goes anywhere it should go to City of Leeds. Even if Leeds covers both the settlement and full city, both articles could exist. It would mirror what we have now in London and Greater London. MRSC (talk) 11:09, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I would be willing to come on board as long as you can assure you will not be seeking to then later change the definition of Leeds to be exclusive to the urban core :P However gven that City of Leeds essentally just deals with governance at district level, wouldnt it be a replica of what should be at Local government in Leeds ? Also if we are to make live City of Leeds, in light of the dual nature of Leeds the hat note at the top of Leeds that would direct to City of Leeds would need to be sufficiently explanatory as to what City of Leeds is about eg. For local governance of the metropolitan district see City of Leeds --Razorlax (talk) 11:41, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes that is fine, my main and only concern is to improve the quality of our coverage of Leeds. Local government in Leeds can redirect to City of Leeds. Why not reuse the wording we use for London? Something like City of Leeds is the administrative subdivision covering Leeds? MRSC (talk) 11:48, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

If the article is not to be split, then I shall be pleased to help to improve it. IMO, as it is now (see timestamp)it is far too Leeds the settlement centric. Education section actually says "in the borough"!!--Harkey (talk) 18:03, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

The education section is far too long and focusses on local education policy far too closely. Not sure if some of this would be better in Leeds City Council as an education policy section, or an article in itself. This section should be no more than two paragraphs: one on the universities and another on FE colleges and notable schools. MRSC (talk) 18:14, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

So do we now have an un-split Leeds to which everyone is happy to contribute, which defines itself as "city and metropolitan borough"? If so, then I too will contribute to its improvement - but not if there's then going to be another split, or an attempt to redefine this article. I'm not clear what remains to be in "City of Leeds", which perhaps ought to redirect to Local government in Leeds - (City of) London is a completely different case and irrelevant to discussion of Leeds. PamD (talk) 18:29, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I can't say I agree there. If you read London and Greater London you will see that they are often referring to the same area. And my point is, it is possible to have a Leeds article referring to the human settlement (which may or may not extend to the every inch of the district boundary) and also have a City of Leeds article that focuses exclusively on the administrative entity (as London/Greater London). MRSC (talk) 18:34, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Hiya PamD, it defines itself as both "city and metropolitan borough" and urban subdivision - ie, both, and reading the full article it makes perfect sense. Certain things naturally lend themselves to being discussed about in terms of a district/entire city/met borough context, eg economy, education, whilst other subjects predominantly the central area, such as the history section for example. I cannot see that there will be any splits or attempts to redefine what Leeds is PamD, so please do not hestitate to contribute. --Razorlax (talk) 19:03, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Civil parishes list

Is it uncontroversial to remove the list of civil parishes from this article? I propose to summarise something like There are 27 other civil parishes in the district MRSC (talk) 13:01, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd go along with that personally. They take up a lot of space for something that is just passing information. Would a list of civil parishes be included as a subsection on some other linked article like Areas of Leeds or something similar? --Razorlax (talk) 13:17, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

It is already in City of Leeds article. MRSC (talk) 13:56, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Education section

I cut the reference to a partial list of schools as part of a drastic trim. Does this need to be added back, somehow?--Harkey (talk) 12:56, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Architecture

This section, besides being unreferenced, is more about parks and open spaces than architecture and may be better placed elsewhere and renamed, or maybe reduced to a single paragraph in another section. Any suggestions/comments?--Harkey (talk) 16:43, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:UKCITIES recommends a "Landmarks" section between Economy and Transport. I think to be a landmark is to be notable, so it will ensure only the important stuff goes in. MRSC (talk) 16:16, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Some were notable enough, just out of place. You are right about a landmarks section; maybe work on it later, eh?--Harkey (talk) 16:49, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject England#City disambiguation

In case any editors have missed it, this discussion is very relevant to edits to this page.--Harkey (talk) 11:01, 30 October 2009 (UTC)